Monday, May 11, 2015

"Hail Mary"

Kamusta na! This week
started with a BANG! Literally! There was an enormous thunderstorm on Monday
and the rain really came down! Pretty
much our whole neighborhood was in a 6 inch deep pond! It was proselyting in the evening an
adventure! But sa wak as we taught
Sister Ligaya about the Sabbath as well as Nanay Lolita. We slept at the Assistants’ house because Tuesday
was MLC! And I loved it again. There was some heart-wrenching accountability
as my area hasn’t had a baptism in 2015, but it was a good call to action. It
was humbling, but it was what I needed to hear, especially at this part of my
mission. There were also great topics
about the Sabbath, the convincing power of the Book of Mormon, pride and
culture. I also got to bear my testimony
at the end because that’s the privilege of all departing missionariesL. It was bittersweet. I also got to see so many of my friends,
possibly for the last time. I’ve been so
blessed to associate with so many incredible missionaries. I love them and I’ll miss them for sure. But there’s still work to do!

His birthday present to Dad: a "stealcht" fighter :)

On Wednesday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD, YA OLD GOOF!) I went on exchanges with my bud Elder Burnett in Burgos. We were on bikes
again! I met a less active who is from
the same town as/ knows Elder Lungay (my trainer!). Then while we were biking we got caught in
the heaviest rain of my mission. Just
completely soaked. But we got to teach
some really spiritual lessons to some less actives. On the way home we were running a little
late, so we biked as hard as we could to get home on time and we did! But my nametag fell off in the dark while we
were on the bikes :(. I’m only left with my pin-on one! But I got a makeshift one that works well. Thursday we had zone training. It went ok-ish. I felt like we couldn’t inspire the zone like
we wanted to…it was kind of quiet. But
toward the end it was really spiritual and that was good. … I really pray that
we helped our missionaries kahit papaano.
We went and taught our recent convert Harvey and our cute, tiny
investigator Leah in Aguso…and it rained again!
We taught Sister Ami again for the first time in a while…We taught
Sister Queendee and she’s starting to progress!
She’s got great potential.
Lastly, we visited Nanay Mocun, the member who washes for us, and it
turns out that she has 3 less active kids who are grown up and have families now,
and we set up a time to teach them on Sunday!

Soaked!

Friday we had exchanges again, this time I was in my own
area with Elder Mitchell, who is an awesome missionary, about 10 months
out. We went finding and taught some
guys. One named Lyndon has some
potential, but we’ll see! We taught
Matthew… Oh, man. So Matthew texted his
grandpa and (I’ll summarize) asked him to sign a waiver (It came across like a liability
waiver, not a baptism and confirmation record) coming from the foreign
missionaries, AND in the same text he asked if he could have his passport! Well, his grandpa freaked out at him because
he thought that we were trying to get Matthew to leave the country to go on a
mission! Agh! He is utterly refusing to sign… Our only hope
is Matthew’s aunt (his grandpa’s niece), a member, who is coming in to town… We are going to ask her to explain everything
clearly to the grandpa (He refuses to see/talk to us), and hopefully convince
him to sign the form. It’s a long shot—a Hail Mary—but we’ll give it all we got for Matthew to get baptized. We taught Daisy, who said she’s looking to
finish the Book of Mormon next week! I’ll
be very impressed when that happens! We
ate dinner at a little restaurant and then it rained….AGAIN! And our area flooded a bit! Good thing the office elders, Elder Cancel
and Elder Eggett, came by in the van and picked us up! We visited a member of Elder Mitchell’s
branch who is actually in the hospital here in Tarlac and we gave him a
blessing. Afterwards, we found a vending
machine! It was the first I’ve used one
in over 23 months! Not gonna lie, it
kind of took us a while to figure out how it worked. Missionary problems. Anywho, we ended up teaching the Victorio
family, and the water had gone down a bit.

Saturday morning we taught the Vilencia family, Romi and
Joven, then their 22 year old son, John.
They were really into the lesson and understood the apostasy SUPER
well. They accepted goal dates for June
AND fed us toron (my favorite!). We
exchanged back then went out to work! We
taught Anthony, who finally committed to coming to church, but then didn’t show...
And Al is still here! His departure to
go to Kuwait got moved. We passed by his
house, saw him and taught him! I’m super
pumped that he is still here! We taught the
Fiesta family and found out that the mom has a word of wisdom problem, so that
is probably keeping her from coming to church.
We ended the night by teaching Nora about the word of wisdom….. Good
day!

Sunday was good! Church
was great! I’m trying to take the Sabbath,
especially sacrament meeting more seriously.
It was a good experience partaking of the sacrament this week. Matthew, Daisy, and Leah came to church this
week, so good stuff!

We went on splits
and I worked with Michael Ramos, one of my good friends here in Ward 4, for the
first part of the afternoon. We went to
teach Matthew and … his Aunt Roxanne was there!
Miraculous timing. She wasn’t
sure if our plan would work, but she’s willing to help! Matthew’s so ready, but we just have got to
figure out how to get him baptized!
Later May Duenas and PJ DeLeon (two 18 year olds who want to serve
missions) worked with me and we taught Daisy, who is progressing nicely. We got punted from all of our other
appointments, but there was miraculous timing again when we were walking down
the street and two little boys came up and told us they were members! They moved from another stake last November,
but then lost contact with the church.
And they live super close to the stake president and our recent
convert! Miracle!

Life is good. I love
being a missionary and I don’t want this to end! Live long and prosper!